Barefoot run, day 2

I did Day 3 of the 100 push ups workout today. I'm am all the way up to 5 push ups! Woot! Even last year I was doing way more than that, and I'm surprised I can lose that much power/endurance so easily. Maybe it's more mental than physical. Anyway, I'm up to 5 in a set.

My whole legs have been pretty sore since Wednesday. But by yesterday (Friday) afternoon, they were feeling pretty good. I prefer being comfortable rather than doing difficult exercise, and I never got around to going running today. However, I did go outside with the kids to supervise YoungestSon's bike riding. I figured I might as well run around instead of walk right by him. So I decided to take off my shoes and go for it. It was in the parking lot (asphalt) and on the sidewalk. I was easily able to avoid gravel/rocks.

I was going along, and thinking "hmm, I seem to be wasting a lot of energy on really short strides and up and down movements rather than forward movements. I bet I can push off and move forward more fairly easily." So I tried it. And it seemed to work very well. However, as I was pushing off, my toes were kind of gripping and twisting against the ground. I then noticed a stinging, squishy, slimy feeling on one toe. I thought "oh, I'll just ignore that." Yeah, that wasn't such a good idea. When I finally looked at it, a layer of skin was gone on that toe. It was kind of like a popped blister.

The ultimate rule of learning to run barefoot is to pay attention to your skin. Your skin will tell you to slow down, so that you protect your feet, which need time to strengthen after being in shoes for so long. So yeah, I totally ignored that rule. I only ran around the building a couple of times, about 0.4 miles total. But now my bones in my lower legs ache a little, my feet ache a tiny bit, and obviously the skin on that toe hurts.

I confess that I'm doubting barefoot running a little bit. However, when I look at running in shoes with a heel strike, it just doesn't look right. I think that it's totally reasonable to expect that my body will need some time to catch up after exercising in shoes. And it makes sense to run truly barefoot rather than in Vibram Five Fingers to start out. But I'm not sure what to do in the meantime. Running 0.4 miles a few times a week isn't much of a workout. Maybe I can run barefoot for a while, and then switch to shoes.